Map help

[Crow]

I'll worry bout it l8er.



My mass groups of spiders seem to tottaly lose all interest in you after about 10 seconds. This is boring and annoying. Thothie i think you said you ran into this as well. Any way to fix it?

 

[Thothie]

I've not had spiders do that, but it maybe you have too many, or they are spawning at the wrong altitude... Or you have an info_node that, maybe, they are actually paying attention to (although I don't think they normally do).



I've not seen the other two maps yet. But you've no custom content on the first map except for calmair.wav (which seems to be just static), and yet you've copied all the default content to your own folders.



Again, there's no point of having this 'middle' map here all alone - stick it onto either the north or south end of the city. Surely it'll fit somewhere. If it wont fit on the horizontal plane, put it below the city, and make the doors into teleporters, but there's no need for this one room to be its own map.



Your content:

sprites/crow/flare1.spr

is valve (spirtes/flare1.spr)



sprites/crow/glow01.spr

is valve (sprites/glow01.spr) - This is Hammer's default sprite FFS!



Similarly with all the other sprites you provided with the first map.



Some of your custom waves have equivalents in the valve folder that are of better quality.



Also note, to follow convention, custom sounds go into the "sound" (singular) folder, not "sounds" (plural) folder. (yes, a nit pick, but makes writing res files easier)

_________________

"Consciousness: That annoying time between naps."

Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

I think i realized why i did that. I didnt know you could use stuff from valve in ms. I dont know why. But that might have been the reason.

I now have the three rmfs of my old campaign and one side of the new city bsp on your server thingie. Working on the second.

 

[Thothie]

Heh, shoulda kept my mouth shut. This could turn into a lot of work... Also kills my plan for releasing the multiplayer package for your maps, at least, until I optimize these...



Looking at Goldnorth... Looks good. There are some overlapping brushes causing visual distortions in the tunnels, and your giant rats are too close to the walls (causing them to get stuck and sometimes sink off the map). I like the map a lot visually, and the folliage is very nice.



Still, there's absolutely no reason not to stick the goldspawn map onto one side of this map.

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"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy."

Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

oh. i think i get a max_patches error

 

[Thothie]

Raise the -chop and -texchoip options on HLRad to 96 or 128.



ie. hlrad -chop 96 -texchop 96 -low -extra "%1.map"

or, for the quicky:

hlrad -chop 128 -texchop 128 -low -nolerp "%1.map"



Also, using lit textures adds like mad to your patches, as it creates one light for every tile of lit texture you use. Often better, and many times more effective, to use a regular light near a func_illusionary or some such instead.

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Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

that would be the glowing crystals i guess. I look into it once i finish riverwind2.



Also: i noticed those cool footstep sounds for when you walk on different surfaces dont work for my map. Do i have to use a certain texture? I mean i know you have to use a grass texture for the grass sound and stuff but does it need a specific name?

 

[Thothie]

I'm not sure if that'll work in MS, as they didn't supply a Materials.txt with their mod, which is the file that define which textures produce what sounds when stepped on.



You can copy the materials.txt from the half-life.gcf's valve/sound folder into the ms/sound, and distribute it with your map ala res file. Only the textures within it make different foot steps sounds. If you append the file, you can define the noise for other textures.

_________________

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences; what others say in a whole boo." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

Alrighty, two new questions.

First off, i want wind sounds through out my map, but i dont want them heard in certain areas (caves and such). Is there any possible way to make it so that when you pass through a certain area it stops the wind sound, and when you go back out it starts it agian? I think it does it in thornlands. It might just be they placed lots of ambient generics where ever with small radi. i dunno.



Also, there is apparently an appropriate texture for things that players dont see. I use sky but i found it creates the least patches. I was, of course (and i saw this coming, i just didnt know there was something else) scolded mercsilessly for this, for it creats massive amount of lag. Hopefully once i fix this my maps will run much faster

I was told it was named "null" but to my horror, when i finnaly got back to mapping, i found no texture named null. Any help here?



Thanx, }Cr0w{

 

[Kuroneko]

The zhlt.wad should have a null texture, or you could just add one yourself.

 

[Crow]

Oh... sweet! heh found it thx.



I updated my site a little. I need help creating a convinceing storyline for my next series. My current one is a bit flat, and way too short, i need help with it. Read it and see if maybe you can come up with something close to the general idea im going for but longer and better thanx, }Cr0w{

 

[Thothie]

Convention suggests to use the "aatrigger" texture, for triggers, monster spawn areas, msarea_transitions, and other things players will not see.



If you're simply trying to reduce the tiles of textures used by brushes the players will never see (such as those on the outside of the map) - use FIT option on the texture alignment tool. It'll be but one tile per side then.

_________________

"Experience is what causes you to make new mistakes instead of old ones."

Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

I was told "null" makes it so the applied side is not even drawn, and is ignored by something, therefore useing less whatever and making the map run faster.

 

[Thothie]

Ah, I shall have to look into that... I get compile issues when I use ZHLT brushes though. Otherwise, I'd be using Hint and Skip brushes by now...



Max_patches, however, is usually caused by two things - using the default HRAD settings (which are way too low at 32 by default), and too many lights. For instance, on Orcplace, where you tried to put four physical lights on every small chandelier - really works better to just have the single light whenever you have a cluster of light sources, as it achieves the same effect (multiple light sources of the same color close together just overlap). Also, again, any texture that emits light (with the exception of Sky), counts as a single light for every tile of the texture that is used.



Oh yeah, here's the current Orcplace2.rmf for your records. Bit sloppy since I didn't want to redo the furniture or the door, so I kinda built around them, but I get a solid 100fps here now. This puter isn't very good for map performance testing though - I haven't had Cyax give it the hard-core test with his Vic-20 yet.

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"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's probably you." - Rita Mae Brown

Saint Thoth



PS. Looking at the source for Lostcastle and... My... Dear... GOD... I've my doubts that I could fix this... I think maybe easier to remake it from scratch. :|

 

[Crow]

LOL, its that much of a mess eh? I dont remember it that well.

Im sure with my reckless crafting (remember i had just finished highlands, with all my wonderful cylinders) i have managed to make a huge mess, since lostcastle is much more complex then highlands.



Also, im having a problem with this new null thing. I have apllied it to all my maps, and it seemed to work fine, but when i used it on riverwind2, the game freezes about 1 second after i select my character. I have no idea why this is happening, there is no error in the compile report thingy...

are you not supposed to overuse it or something?



EDIT: i read around a little on Tommy's page and it says "NULL requires a custom reworking of Zoner's Compiling tools that Merle made, available at: HL SDK forum."

The link to the forum is broken, so i cant really look into that. The zoners half life tools i downloaded must have came with the zhlt.wad, because i didnt go out of my way to get it. With this in mind, im wondering if it is safe to assume the version i got is the reworked version, or why would it give me the wad with the null texture in the first place...

But i still have no way around this problem yet

 

[Crow]

I think maybe I'll just give up.

My testers have decieded the sven-coop style of fight to continue is bad. I'll release what i have now in an install pakage rar. The map that has the problem works "okay." It'll play, and its a big laggy, as always, but at least you'll be albe to play it. There is a big entity overflow issue, which means monsters will dissapear because there are just too many. Sorry.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Don't give up
Steven and I loved testing with you

It would be absolutely cool if you'd finish your second series!

 

[Thothie]

There is a big entity overflow issue, which means monsters will dissapear because there are just too many. Sorry.

Easy way around that, is to reduce the number of monsters, and just use meaner monsters to compensate. (Replace 12 skeletons with 1 undead warrior, etc.)

IM me if you need a test, if yer lucky I'll be around and I can stick it on the server, and maybe we can work something out.
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Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

Well, unfortuneatly its not that easy, and thats not even the problem im having. I even tried removing the zhlt.wad from the texture list to get rid of all the null textures in my map, but that didnt work. I'm so tottally stumped i dont know what to do.
I can fix the monster thing easy. I just need to reduce the amount but increase # of lives. I have it set up so that you fight different levels of them in order to move on, so increasing difficulty wont work, but anyways i can fix that.
What i can't fix is the fact that it freezes for no reason at all, and there is no trace of the problem anywhere.

Note: did you read my post above my last post? i double posted 8)
Btw thothie i can't seem to get into your server anymore. gives me an error

 

[Thothie]

Well, now that you've removed the ZHLT wad. Use the Texture Alignment Tool (Shift-A) to Replace all the Null textures on the map with something else via the search and replace feature.

If that don't fix it, check to see if the map loads in HL1 (after you copy over the MS models, sprites, and wads to half-life/valve). (Note: you'll spawn at 0x0x0, if there's no info_player_start on the map). If it runs here, then, it's most likely an entity problem. Start deleting gobs of entities, compiling, and undoing, until it goes.

*sigh* As for the server. Well... I dunno. I got people going in and out now... IM me if it does it again... I guess.
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"Don't panic, and always carry a towel." - HGTG
Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

serious... there is a search and replace all of a texture in a map...

No ****ing way.
That would have saved me like... DAYS o well. You learn something new everyday eh?

Well, i did that, and it still is freezing up. ive treid just running it in half life and it still does the same thing. What really bothers me is it ran fine before i started to null stuff, but after i nulled stuff it froze. I didnt change ANYTHING else between then.

 

[Thothie]

Save the map under a new name, and delete all the entities in it (use the Entity Report to do this), then try the map in HL.

If it works that way, you can start removing entities in the order you last put them in, or just repaint all the entities. (Much easier than rebuilding the whole map).

Be sure you aren't registering any map problems in compile or via alt-p, also make sure nothing funny in Worldspawn.
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"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach gym."
Saint Thoth

PS. I think I figured what may have been making my server act funny. I think playing NS while the MS server was up caused entitiy memory area conflicts... I won't do that anymore.

 

[Crow]

Well, with that advice, I'm making progress

It seems that it is a func_wall that is causeing the problem. I guess i just have to narrow it down to which one is doing it. Hopefully its only one...

Edit: Well it turns out its not only one
Is there anyway to make it so that the func_monsterfurniture does not fall? Like make it so it stays where you put it in hammer.
Also, there are these textres that are suppose to resemple bloody splatters, probably used with the decal thing, but they are white and black and start with this {
How do you use them correctly?

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

They seem white in black but in-game they (should) look different.

 

[Thothie]

Decal Tutorial:
http://www.egir.dk/index.php?page=vhe_decal.php

Some {decal (solid) textures for func_walls cause issues. Remember, also, such func walls count as sprites, and having too many complex ones can get you an Alloc error. (Crashes map)

Careful of some of the tutorials there though - I see them developing potential problems in MS maps. Not that one though. But Stay far, far away from their terrain tutorial.
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"And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode."
Saint Thoth